"Moth-eaten" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... contemnes, as a novelty of this latter age; but a manuscript he pores on everlastingly; especially if the cover be all moth-eaten, and the dust make a parenthesis betweene ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... It leaves a man nowhere, helpless. It lifts him off the ground and holds him kicking futilely in the air. Just that. By God, I'm desperate enough to try anything—to try building the ditch—try whipping Menocal even under this moth-eaten ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... said Julie, standing absently before a case of stuffed birds, somewhat moth-eaten, which took up a good deal of space in the little hall. ...
— Lady Rose's Daughter • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... in reference to the prudery with which she occasionally covered her conduct,—"In the meantime," said he, "it will be her prudence, to take care that they be not tarnished and moth-eaten, for want of opening and airing, and turning, at ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... gaunt, with blotched walls and a stained uneven floor. On a divan lay a pile of "properties"—limp draperies, an Algerian scarf, a moth-eaten fan of peacock feathers. The janitor had forgotten to fill the coal-scuttle over-night, and the cast-iron stove projected its cold flanks into the room like a black iceberg. Ned Stanwell, who had just added his hat and great-coat to the miscellaneous ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... elemental jade who gave herself more readily to a rough embrace than a soft caress. She reserved her favors for those who wrested them from her...she had no patience with the soft delights of persuasion. It was strange how much rough-hewn vitality had poured into her embrace from the moth-eaten civilization of the Old World. Starratt was only a generation removed from a people who had subdued a wilderness ... he was not many generations removed from a people who wrestled naked with God for a whole continent—that is, they had begun to wrestle; the years that had succeeded ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... the two of them out to the back yard. There were seven Rep Rho Betas on seven moth-eaten ponies which they had dug up from goodness knows where. The rigs they had on represented each fellow's idea of what a cowboy looked like, and would have made a real cowpuncher hang himself for shame. Petey confessed afterward that, of all the Rep Rho Betas, only seven ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... manner in which you have executed an important mission. Since you left America, however, a document has come into my hands, which, had it reached me earlier, would have saved you a long and tedious search among mouldy and moth-eaten papers. It was nothing less than ...
— The Allen House - or Twenty Years Ago and Now • T. S. Arthur
... before my eyes now while I write. It is dusty with age; the paint on it is cracked; the ropes are tangled; the sails are moth-eaten and yellow. The hull is all out of proportion, and the rig has been smiled at by every nautical friend of mine who has ever looked at it. Yet, worn-out and faulty as it is—inferior to the cheapest miniature vessel nowadays in any toy-shop window—I hardly know ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... the other by a graveyard. The horizon is a circle of cones, of dry scoriae, like pumice, or covered with short grass; above them, the glassy slope of perpetual ice and snow; to walk on, a scanty growth of grass moth-eaten by sand. In two words, to sum up the scene, it was nature's scab, the leprosy ...
— The Cathedral • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... the great, sombre library, Joan hazarded the suggestion. Mrs. Denton might almost have been waiting for it. It would be quite easy. A little opening of long fastened windows; a lighting of chill grates; a little mending of moth-eaten curtains, a sweeping away ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... yielded, and allowed her to lead him into the room. There she lighted a candle, and as it came gradually alive, it shed a pale yellow light around, and revealed a bare chamber, with a bedstead and the remains of a moth-eaten mattress in a corner. Leopold threw himself upon it, uttering a sound that more resembled a choked scream than a groan. Helen sat down beside him, took his head on her lap, and sought to soothe him ...
— Thomas Wingfold, Curate • George MacDonald
... had been packed away, and spreading them out on the line to air. Presently an old uniform with worn trimmings was swinging its sleeves in the air and embracing a brocade gown; from behind it peeped a court-coat, with buttons stamped with coats-of-arms, and moth-eaten collar; and white kersymere pantaloons with spots, which had once upon a time clothed Ivan Nikiforovitch's legs, and might now possibly fit his fingers. Behind them were speedily hung some more in the shape of the letter pi. Then came ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... were an interesting-looking body of men; strong-framed, heavy-featured, with long unkempt hair and beards. They rode shaggy, moth-eaten-looking little ponies, each man with a bundle of hay bound to his saddle and a sausage in his wallet. Fathers among them as hale as the brawny sons by their sides. They looked capable ...
— A Woman's Part in a Revolution • Natalie Harris Hammond
... immortal things in a night. Seen thus, it even challenged the beholder's admiration, of which he was at all times sparing. Until that hour, he had found nothing but laughter for this same mount, likening the spectacle of it, with its castle and cottages, now to a senile monarch with moth-eaten ermine about his toes and a lop-sided crown on his head, now to a ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... on a wet autumn evening the household of Mallett's Lodge was gathered round the death-bed of Ursula Mallow, the eldest of the three sisters who inhabited it. The dingy moth-eaten curtains of the old wooden bedstead were drawn apart, the light of a smoking oil- lamp falling upon the hopeless countenance of the dying woman as she turned her dull eyes upon her sisters. The room was in silence except for an occasional ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... his place, usually in a sadly perfunctory manner. However, he was there in person, as his voice, a clear and pleasant one, showed the denizens of the "closet," for they could not see out of it, except where Eugene had furtively enlarged a moth-eaten hole in the curtain, through which, when standing on the seat, he could enjoy an oblique view of the back of an iron-moulded surplice and a very ill-powdered wig. This was a comfort to him. It would have been more satisfactory to ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of chipped flint which have called him into such noisy activity,—and discover, as he will discover, that the assumed inference from the gravel and the bones is fallacious after all[321].—Let the Historian go spell a little longer over that moth-eaten record of dynasties which never were, by means of which he proposes to set right the clock of Time[322]. Let the Naturalist walk round the stuffed or bleached wonders of his museum, and guess again[323]. Theological Science not so! Her evidence is sure, ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... longer?" said Berry. "Not that I really care, because I wouldn't visit Bordeaux a second time for any earthly consideration. I've seen a good many poisonous places in my time, but for inducing the concentrated essence of depression, that moth-eaten spectre of bustling commerce has them, as the immortal B-B-B-Wordsworth says, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... beat a can-can of invitation on her doorway; but she could lock and bolt herself into her room, a box, it is true, at two dollars and a half a week, but it boasted half curtains of yellow scrim, a couch-bed with a moth-eaten but gay wool cover, and a small square of table with a reading lamp attached by a tube to the ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... chair. Then he seemed surprised, and greatly interested. He laid his hat among the breakfast cups and crossed the room softly to look down at the little old man crumpled, sleeping, in the folds of the moth-eaten coat, the doll ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the laborers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... me—that's the question," pursued the Judge. "Success is probably at the end for him, but he has two ways of success open. He may go slowly and well, or fast and ill. Road number one: he stays with my moth-eaten old practice, he refurbishes it, he earns a partnership; and so to conservative clients and, probably, to genuine success." ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... Brimberly," pursued his master, seating himself upon the escritoire and swinging his leg, "I want some old clothes, shabby clothes—moth-eaten, stained, battered, and torn. Also a muffler and an old hat. Can you find ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... satisfied Edna and she followed along through the deserted rooms, catching sight of a moth-eaten cover here, a bunch of withered flowers there. Books, long untouched, lay half open on a table in one room, the bed was still unmade in another, ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... have been nothing remarkable in finding such clothes in a widow's house had they been clean; or moth-eaten, or creased, or mouldy from long lying by; but that they should be splashed with recent mud bothered Stockdale a good deal. When a young pastor is in the aspen stage of attachment, and open to agitation at ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... and mellow. On the stone bench by the porter's lodge, hard by the gate, sat the old Florentine and O'Mally. From some unknown source O'Mally had produced a concierge's hat and coat, a little moth-eaten, a little tarnished, but serviceable. Both were smoking red-clay pipes ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... it must be to many a gallant fellow to take the business into his own hands! Nelson knew well enough that he had laid himself open to the full penalty of naval law, but he knew also that if any of the moth-eaten crew at Whitehall even hinted it there would be "wigs on the green." No man knew the pulse of the nation better, and no commander played up to it less. One can imagine hearing him say to some of his ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman
... I hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination to win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in every land and clime, wherever condensed milk and pasteboard cartons are known! Believe me, ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... encounter with the heat of the Sun; that were a Task only for Don Vincentio and his Indian Breeding, who loves it in the Dog-days— And if these be her daily Divertisements, what are those of the Night? to lie in a wide Moth-eaten Bed-Chamber with Furniture in Fashion in the Reign of King Sancho the First; the Bed that which his Forefathers liv'd ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... oak beams of the floor to the faded ghostly hangings on the wall. There was a bed at one end—a great spectral ark of a thing, like a mausoleum, with drapery as old and spectral as that on the walls, and in which she could no more have lain than in a moth-eaten shroud. The seats and the one table the room held were of the same ancient and weird pattern, and the sight of them gave her a shivering sensation not unlike an ague chill. There was but one door—a huge structure, with shining panels, securely locked; and escape ...
— The Midnight Queen • May Agnes Fleming
... There were some old, moth-eaten hangings about the walls here and there, and I took one down and laid it over Hollins, wondering while I did this office for him what strange secret it was that he had carried away into death, and why that queer ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... Duchess, who to her acquaintances had always seemed as unemotional as the dust-coated, moth-eaten parrot which stood in mummified aloofness upon her safe, had made a momentous decision that had sent through her old veins the thrilling sap of a great crisis, a great suspense. She had tried to guide destiny. ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... five-legged kittens, mangy lynxes, moth-eaten coyotes, and dancing bears I returned courteous but uncompromising refusals—of course, first submitting all such letters, together with my replies, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... the little moth-eaten, fat man at the door. He is the mouthpiece of the People's, but he doesn't dislike to feast with the classes. He is probably telling Woodyard at this moment what the President said to him last week about Princhard's ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... gently, "I reckon there ain't no useless good vocabulatin' about that varmint, Silvertip. I should a-known better'n to trust a man o' his moth-eaten morals, anyhow." ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... the absence of the morning's crossness I agreed at once, and retired to the fly-blown smoking-room, where there was ample choice of distraction for a writing man between a moth-eaten volume called King's Concordance and a South-Eastern Railway time-table cover, very solidly fashioned, with lots of crimson and gold, but no inside. Here I smoked half a pipe, and would have rested, but that I felt too dirty. Presently Boots came ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... and laughing to see them turn their heads to listen to what old Yir Massir said to them in Hindustani. He spoke words of comfort, telling them not to be afraid; and they listened. Even Bahut, the big elephant, as the slings tightened and he swung dizzily heavenward, cocked his moth-eaten ears to listen and refrained from whimpering, though the pit of his stomach was cold with fear; and he worked his toes when there was nothing ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the old vicarage way, to endeavour to make everything out of something else, and to rummage out a store of old rubbish, as the first step towards manufacturing a new garment! The treasures which were to contribute towards Esther's trousseau consisted of a moth-eaten Paisley shawl, a checked silk skirt of unbelievable hideousness, a muslin scarf; yellow with age, a broken ivory fan, and a pair of mittens. A vision of Esther figuring as a bride in this old- world costume, rose before Peggy's quick-seeing ...
— More About Peggy • Mrs G. de Horne Vaizey
... into the country. He walked with her on the boulevards in the sunlight, and enjoyed the warmth the more for leaning on her arm. It delighted him to see her in good spirits. Often, to amuse her, he would take down a moth-eaten costume from his wardrobe and try to remember a fragment of some part that had gone from his memory. The mere sight of this little maid and her white cap was like a ray of returning youth to him. In his old age, Jocrisse ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... 2.30 race being run off he returns to the Ring for the serious business of the day. After examining Transformation in the paddock and listening to the comments of the knowing ones—"Too thick in the barrel," "Too long in the pastern," "Too moth-eaten in the coat"—he will exercise caution and, instead of "putting his shirt" on Transformation and plunging to the extent of, say, L5, will put up not more than L3 10s. and await the result with calmness. When ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... stood a round mahogany table, bearing a bouquet of wax flowers under a glass shade. Cases of stuffed birds ornamented every available recess; mahogany and horsehair chairs were set stiffly round the walls at even distances. A heap of folded moth-eaten rugs and wraps disfigured a side-table, and beneath it stood a row ...
— Peter's Mother • Mrs. Henry De La Pasture
... him, dishevelled and tearful, his Amanda, very intensely his Amanda, and said that she was dirty and shameful and spoilt for ever, because he had gone away from her. Afterwards the dream became absurd: she showed him the black leopard's fur as though it was a rug, and it was now moth-eaten and mangey, the leopard skin that had been so bright and wonderful such a little time ago, and he awoke before he could answer her, and for a long time he was full of unspoken answers explaining that in view of her deliberate unfaithfulness the position she took up was absurd. She had spoilt her ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... herself inside a cupboard full of old lumber. The dust was thick, and surely had not been disturbed for years. Some broken chairs with moth-eaten seats were piled together, and some ancient boxes lay full of rubbish. Straw, old books, hanks of rope, and other miscellaneous things occupied the corner. There was a door opposite, without either latch or knob. Raymonde with some difficulty managed to pull ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... claim that the Maryland Colony in the days of the Calverts became the first home of true religious liberty on American soil has been so often blasted by historians that one is loath to enter upon this moth-eaten claim for fear of merely repeating what others have more exhaustively stated. Catholics seem to forget what Bishop Perry has called attention to: "The Maryland charter of toleration was the gift of an English monarch, the ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau
... himself staggered by anything. At his first glimpse of the emu he cried ecstatic, "Look, there's a—," and paused, not knowing what on earth to call it. Then rapidly to cover up his ignorance he pointed confidently to a somewhat similar fowl and said sagely, "And there's another!" The curious moth-eaten and shabby appearance that captive camels always exhibit was accurately recorded in his addressing one of them as "poor old horsie." And after watching the llamas in silence, when he saw them nibble ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... huge, old-fashioned thing that framed in her silver-white hair like a pent-house. The very shape and fashion of this bonnet was pathetic—it spoke of so long ago. The black dress and soft shawl with which she had come to the prison were a little moth-eaten, but not much, for they had been carefully hoarded; but the poor old woman looked with a sigh on her prison-dress as it fell to the floor, and wept bitterly before she went out, as if that gloomy mass of stones had been a ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... hands come and rig the ship on old Simp. Tell him your troubles and ask him to help you out. He ain't got nothing better to do. Pitch into him; give him hell; he likes it. Come one, come all—all you moth-eaten, lousy stiffs from Stiffville. Come, tell Simp there's a reporter rubberin' around and you're scared to death. He'll sympathise with ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... countries ambition gets the better of discretion, but fortunately soon finds its natural level: the violent ultra-tory, and the violent ultra-demagogue sink alike, after a few years of excitement, into the moth-eaten receptacle of newspaper renown, alike unheeded, and alike forgotten, by a newer and more enlightened generation, who find that, to the cost of the real interest of the people, the mouthing orator, the agitator, the ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... few servants dared not take them out to be beaten in the due season of the year, for indubitably they would fall to pieces. So the curtains hung till an unwary stranger would rest upon them with a hand's weight. Then that hand plucked a palmbreadth away of the rotten and moth-eaten fabric. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... representation of the battle he had won five years before. From a throne he watched the manoeuvres executed under the command of Murat, Lannes, and Bessires. He had had the coat and hat he wore on the day of the battle brought from Paris. The coat was somewhat moth-eaten, and the odd hat would have seemed very much out of date if it had not recalled such precious memories. But Napoleon liked to recall that eventful day when he had managed to grasp victory when apparently beaten. After the manoeuvres ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... wishing to dress like his friends, had put on knickerbockers and a college blazer, down the back of which hung his black, silky pigtail. Charlie was wearing flannel trousers and a khaki tunic, while Fred was attired in a black and somewhat moth-eaten suit, which was too short for him both ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... currents can be ignorant of the fact that the devout men and women of the present are earnestly inquiring, "What is sanctification? What does holiness mean?" They are demanding of the pulpit and of the church editor something more than the time-worn and moth-eaten excuses for not teaching a deeper work of grace. The "seven thousand" who have not "bowed the knee" to the modern Baals are insisting that, if God's Word teaches entire sanctification for the disciple of Christ obtainable by faith now, they must ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... And twice ten hundred voices spoke "The playhouse is in flames!" And, lo! where Catharine street extends, A fiery tail its luster lends To every window-pane; Blushes each spout in Martlet Court And Barbican, moth-eaten fort, And Covent Garden kennels sport, A bright ensanguined drain; Meux's new brewhouse shows the light, Rowland Hill's chapel, and the height Where patent shot they sell; The Tennis-Court, so fair and tall, Partakes the ray, with Surgeons' ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... unwashed, unstrained, unpurified^; squalid; lutose^, slammocky^, slummocky^, sozzly^. nasty, coarse, foul, offensive, abominable, beastly, reeky, reechy^; fetid &c 401. [of rotting living matter] decayed, moldy, musty, mildewed, rusty, moth-eaten, mucid^, rancid, weak, bad, gone bad, etercoral^, lentiginous^, touched, fusty, effete, reasty^, rotten, corrupt, tainted, high, flyblown, maggoty; putrid, putrefactive, putrescent, putrefied; saprogenic, saprogenous^; purulent, carious, peccant; fecal, feculent; stercoraceous^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... the first floor there was still a little daylight from a window as big as if set in the tribune of a cathedral. Here a lamp was placed on an old painted table. Some moth-eaten tapestry hung from a mildewed wall. Here and there a rusty nail had given way, and the stuff fell in downward folds. Nobili paused. His head was hot and dizzy. He had dined well, and he had drunk freely. His eyes traveled ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... parents, or grand-parents, would hardly be expected of them. So many of the things to be talked about—motors, wireless, airplanes, new wrinkles and changed conditions—are better understood by them than the old people. It is easy for them to get the feeling that the old people's ideas are rather moth-eaten and of not much account. It is for the rising generation to tell and explain what's doing now and for the setting generation to listen and make ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)
... that the liquid may run their throats. But his method of keeping himself upright, together with certain spasmodic contractions of his fingers and the nervous "uh-ah, uh-ah" which punctuated his insecure phrases like uncertain commas, combined to offer the suggestion of a rooster; a rather moth-eaten rooster, which took itself tremendously seriously and was showing off to an imaginary group of admiring hens situated somewhere in ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... shoulders, and his shirt-sleeves fastened at the wrist. He cared little for outward appearance. He wanted his clasps of gold, but it did not matter if the stuff did shine with grease, or the trimming was moth-eaten. From his broad Turkish girdle no sword hung, but behind was stuck a battle hammer, and above his boot-tops appeared a knife-hilt, studded with turquoises. In all his motions, there was an arrogance that brooked no contradiction, and expressed ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... had not been seriously moth-eaten during our previous confinement, so that I did not hesitate to strike a bargain with Madame Sorret, and to request that la vivandiere might make her appearance on the theatre of action as soon as possible. ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... he cried, "let us have done with these follies! the rats of your garret are very welcome to these moth-eaten parchments for me." ...
— The Well of Saint Clare • Anatole France
... youth," he wrote in 1803, "I had a passion for taking in all the antiques that I met with: moth-eaten furniture, tapestries, family portraits, Gothic manuscripts (that I had learned how to decipher), had for me an indefinable charm. A little later on, I loved to walk in the solitude of cemeteries; to examine the ...
— Letters from an American Farmer • Hector St. John de Crevecoeur
... well as with a nobler desire to rise out of the slough of the old folly of life, the leaders of the nation abandoned then-feuds. Out of the past voices called to them. Their blood thrilled to old sentiments and old traditions which had seemed to belong to the lumber-room of history, with the moth-eaten garments of their ancestors. There were no longer Liberals or Conservatives or Socialists, but only Englishmen, Scotsmen, Irishmen and Welshmen, with the old instincts of race and with the old fighting qualities which in the past they had used ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... although the arrangement of the fruit, flowers, sprays and other accessories was a trifle different. The red cherries, for example, no longer bobbed at the peak of the roof; they now hung jauntily from the rear eaves, so to speak. The purple grapes had also moved and peeped coyly from a thicket of moth-eaten rosebuds. The wearer of this revamped millinery triumph seemed a bit nervous, even anxious, so it seemed to Martha Phipps, who, like Cabot and Galusha, was looking at her. Marietta kept hitching in her seat, pulling at her gown, and glancing from time to time at the gloomy ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... taking leave of his mother, he rode forth, sad at first for leaving her in sorrow and tears, but afterwards glad that now he was going into the world to become a knight. And for armour he had a rough jerkin, old and moth-eaten, and for arms he had a handful of sharp-pointed ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... warmed in winter by a brazier of coals, and at present not warmed at all, though the weather was chilly; furnished shabbily with dusty shelves, a writing-table, and a few chairs with leather seats, musty with an ancient mustiness which seemed to be emitted by the rows of old books and the moth-eaten baize cover of the table—the whole place looked more like the office of a decayed notary than the study of a wealthy nobleman of ancient lineage. The old gentleman himself entered the room a few seconds after ...
— Sant' Ilario • F. Marion Crawford
... it the lantern from the prow of the vessel, which the conscienceless wretches declared dated from many centuries after the supposed battle; and there were the guild drums, and the glorious banner; and the moth-eaten hide of the lion, in which all his predecessors had encased themselves, lay now forgotten behind the altar, covered with cobwebs and dust, but it was none the less as authentic and worthy of reverence as the stones ...
— Luna Benamor • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... was decided. A trunk was found, a moth-eaten bag. His cheap, ill-cut clothes were packed. On a day of late summer he stepped for the first time upon a train—beautiful to him because it ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... square entrance hall of goodly size, very showily finished like a hotel with veneered panels, which already showed signs of wear. Imitation antique chairs stood about, and in front of the fireplace, which was certainly never intended to contain a fire, was spread a somewhat moth-eaten polar bear skin. Still it was grand after a fashion, and the old man in his hand-me-downs ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... not common, but every one had woollen garments and pieces, and the quilts made of these were of grateful warmth in bleak New England. All kinds of commonplace garments and remnants of decayed gentility were pressed into service in these quilts: portions of the moth-eaten and discarded uniforms of militia-men, worn-out flannel sheets dyed with some brilliant home-dye, old coat and cloak linings, well-worn petticoats. A magnificent scarlet cloak worn by a lord mayor of London and brought to America by a member of the Merritt family of Salisbury, Massachusetts, ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle |
